This International Women’s Day, I wanted to explore two big parts of my life. I am a feminist. I am also a lesbian.
Feminist and Queer theories have habitually been placed in opposition with each other. From the beginnings of the Women’s Movement, queer women felt divided between a feminist politics and that of Gay Liberation – neither of which seemed to offer them the space to deal with the oppression they received as a woman and as queer.
But there’s an intimate connection between these two arenas of thought. Both go about querying (or ‘queer-ing’) the norm: the deconstruction of the naturalised and binary categories of gender and sexuality.
Adrienne Rich was one of the first to bring ideas of lesbianism into feminist thought. Amid the 1980s Second Wave, her notion of Lesbian Continuum radically extended the definition of lesbian beyond that of sexual identity, to encompass the diverse bonds formed between women. She wanted to highlight the variations of female-identified experiences, not just erotic but emotional, spiritual and familiar too. In doing so, she made a bold feminist statement, indicating that women do not need to rely on men for any kind of fulfilment.
Her statement was a powerful one; especially with a societal backdrop that has continued to undermine and scrutinize relationships between women, whether that be friendship or more. The word lesbian, in fact, seems to have been hijacked from the romantic vision of its classical etymology. Many of us will have experienced this word being used as an insult, thought of as dirty, unattractive, less-than-feminine, and extensively hypersexual (over the past decade, ‘lesbian’ has been Pornhub’s most popular category). Although some attention must be given to the potential for Lesbian Continuum to undermine the experiences ‘actual’ lesbians, I think there’s something to learn from de-centring sexual encounters from syntactical meaning.
Lesbian Continuum embodies patriarchal subversion. By harnessing diverse bonds across differences, Rich wanted to promote female connections as means for political resistance. We already recognise the power of collective impatience of a sisterhood: from the suffragette movement to equal pay to justice against sexual misconduct and the fight for reproductive rights, camaraderie amongst communities of women has been crucial in propagating social change.
So, what can we learn from Adrienne Rich this International Women’s Day? Well firstly, let’s celebrate all those who are proud to embrace the infinite existences of femininity and female relationships in the face of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. Let’s celebrate friendships between straight women, queer women, bisexual women, lesbians, trans women, trans lesbians, cis women, non-binary lesbians, gender non-conforming lesbians, asexual lesbians – as forces of rebellion against oppression. And finally, let’s celebrate lesbianism as more than just a clinician’s definition of sexual attraction, but as a force of emotion, connection, understanding, care, solidarity and even, dare I say, power.
By Fay Hawkins (she/her), Birmingham LGBT Volunteer Coordinator
